Should Young Athletes Play Football
By: Maxim Collingwood
Young athletes should not play football.
Imagine: you are playing football and you get knocked on the head. Hard. You are dazed and your coach tells you to shake it off, but you can't. then everything goes black. You wake up with a pounding headache and are told you have a concussion. Unfortunately, this happens too much with kids playing football. This is the reason young athletes should not play football.
To begin with, concussions happen way too often, and they are always devastating to the brain. According to Jennifer Shotz from Scope, “Football players of all ages have suffered serious brain damage from repeated concussions.”. this means no matter what age, league, or amount of protective equipment, you're always at risk of a concussion. Also from Jennifer Shotz, “More than 147,00 concussions occurred in youth football during the 2013-2014 school year.”. This is way too many kids that have been injured from a terrible concussion. Jennifer Shotz additionally writes that “If a player's brain has not healed, even a small jolt can cause permanent damage, or death.". All of the 147,000 have had a weak and aching brain that would make them vulnerable to an easy death. So in conclusion, concussions happen very frequently, and when they happen they can cause serious damage.
To wrap up, football is a very dangerous sport. If it isn't breaking bones, it's a concussion. Concussions aren't rare, nor are they weak; and football has too many of them. So unless you want to wake up with a pounding headache and not know what has happened in the last two hours, I recommend you quit football.